hey buddy, if that american education of yours had taught you a bit more about the world you might know that the british still measure weight in stones. next time you're in england and someone asks you how much you weigh you better be able to divide by 14.
and you're telling me that you can eyeball 9/16 of an inch but you can't eyeball 0.56 inch? they're very nearly the same thing -- it's just what you are used to. or how adept you are in math (which gets back to your reply to my post where you brough up education and ignorance).
ignorance is just ignorance. bliss is drug induced.
americans don't know shit about the rest of the world. the rest of the world knows tons about america. not only do we export movies and tv shows, the rest of the world has informative news programs with correspondents reporting honestly on life in other countries and shedding light on global issues rather than focusing on the bad parts of a city like a teenager fretting over a breakout of zits (bad neighborhoods, like zits, will improve and possibly disapper with time and care but don't try to attack either).
1. WE LIKE BEING DIFFERENT
yeah, so does the rest of the world (except maybe japan). so stop trying to impose your values on them.
2. and 3. together are absurd. you could have at least seperated them a bit.
5. countries all over the world like sports which are not popular here. they like the sports but don't give a fuck who cares.
6. and one cares if you use the british system.
4, 7. "we don't give a shit" now that's a position to exalt with gusto! spoken like a real two year old who just learned to say "no".
grow up...
become a kid.
do i need to mention that america is not the center of the universe? military power, check. influencial, check back in 6 years. the highest standard of living in the world, uh, no.
why do I spend my valuable time with people I'd much rather kick in the eye?
just like most of the illegal things done in this earthworld. unless you live in a "bad" neighborhood and have dark skin. then you go to jail.
seriously, insightful? if i wanted to do some illegal spaming or whathaveyou i'd just wardrive/warride (on a bike) an affluent residential neighborhood or office park. there are so many coffee shops/telephone booths/university campuses/open AP's around that i really doubt he's going to have any trouble defending himself if anything were to go down.
all the good criminals i know ride bikes (no license plates) and wear respirators (no facial recognition). cars are for drunk drivers, paedophiles, and cops. and people who aren't very fun. or havn't got a bike yet. says me.
my first tech job (1996) was fixing windows computers with problems, most dealing with the soundcard.
i spent HUNDREDS of hours searching for drivers and changing default settings trying to get soundcards (from turtle beach to via to sound blaster compatible...) working in windows 95. as another poster said, it's not because of windows that these worked (or didn't work) it's because the drivers were well designed (or sucked ass).
it's the manufacturers fault for not providing linux drivers. but we have to remedy the situation by picking up their slack.
that said, i've configured around 8 computers with linux. i never checked the HCL first. and i got the sound to work (even on board sound) to work every time. maybe i'm just lucky but it seems that if you know what you are doing you'll get it to work. i didn't say it's easy.
but there's only so much information that YOU can process. so it depens on what you use your computer for. i write php and sql, browse the web and check email. i don't do video work, play games or compile much. for me, the flatline was around 4 years ago. i've been using (and abusing) my pentium 3, 450mhz laptop with 192 mb of ram for four years.
recently i had to write some java so i SSH'ed into my shared, co-located server. the compile times were more than cut in half. it's not something i do often so i didn't mind having to work thru SSH.
that said, i'll probably be buying a used G4 laptop sometime in the next few months... my laptop's case is cracked in 13 places and the screen has had a slight flicker for over a year.
there are very few stations that play entire albums. those that do often do it illegally. a station is only permitted to play (under the ASCAP or some other acronym's rules) three songs an hour from one artist and no more than two songs from the same album.
there are exceptions; you can make arrangements to play an entire album. but it's rare to hear.
i listen to killradio and kxlu a lot. even then, there are indy musicians who have one or two great songs (which they play and i appreciate) but the rest of the album sucks.
just because you made one good song doesn't mean i should buy your album. it's like ordering 'dog shit with lemon ginger sauce' for the sauce. or something.
you gotta recognize that most of us don't care if water was found on mars. right now it doesn't mean much. it's like early explorers finding the mississippi -- great, but it doesn't affect me. over the next few years the knowledge that water exists on mars will become common but i don't think it's necessary to have a play by play of discoveries when they don't affect me...
there have been so many major breaches of procedure in recent history (guantanamo, 2000 election, tarrifs in violation of trade agreements, withdrawl from weapons treaties...) that i wouldn't be surprised if once again we break the checks and balances rule (as was done in the prescedent setting vietnam war) and reinstate the draft. of course, it would be politically preferable for bush to do it after securing a second term.
finally, you put war in quotes; what makes you think vietnam wasn't a war?
Remember the Viking sailing ships?
Remember Columbus' sailing ships?
Remember the Conestoga wagons?
Remember the first steps off this planet? and onto another world?
for me, it comes down to money. i already give the feds a wad of cash which they blow on things like wars to fight off empty, and missions to outerspace so the rich fucks can get away from poor folks.
i don't want to explore space. it's all rocks and desert and BYOO2. i like the earth though i have to fight to keep a few mother fuckers from from pissin it away.
i'm not content with reading about exploration in a book or seeing pictures on tv; i want to explore the earth. i fund my explorations myself (i'm freezing my ass off in CT right now). if you want to explore space, ok. but find a way to do it without taking money from those who don't give a fuck about distant red rocks and unbreathable atmospheres.
btw, my grandfather was project manager for several of the surveyor missions. he got paid too much and worked too hard.
that's my beef with the space program -- if you want my money ya better do something useful with it. i didn't give it to you so you could realize your dream. my dream is to travel the world and meet cool people and get it on with all the hot ladies(*). but the government won't give me more than food stamps(**) which don't even buy alchohol.
(*) if the space program could find space alien women like the ones on star trek i might reconsider. but i expect aliens women to look more like sea horses and behave like praying mantises.
(**) ladies, i'm not really on food stamps anymore. not that there's anything wrong with that.
most reciepts don't have the full credit card number anymore.
dumpster diving is done for many resons but by definition it involves a dumpster (and no money). this article is about thrifty spending.
i dumpster (dive) most nights for food. the best places are bagle shops/bakerys and health food stores. supermarkets have too much nasty stuff like meat and crab legs (i swore off supermarket dumpsters after blindly sticking my hand into a bag full of crab legs). at the end of the school year i dumpster university campuses for the desktops, laptops, stereos, and tv's which always work. i fix up the computers, load linux and give them community centers. then sell the tv's and stereos cheap through ads (often to freshmen at universities).
my first real dumpster dive (not including my suburban curbside-trash-picking) was at an office building that had caught fire. they gutted the building and threw all the equipment into huge dumpsters. everything smelled like smoke (which no amount of bleach or cleaner could remove) but i got slide projectors, pelican-style cases, monitors (no desktops?), reams of paper, business software and some other junk.
if you get the urge to dumpster for food PLEASE do the rest of us a favor and keep the area clean. two of my regular dumpsters got locked in the past month because people would pull everything out and make a mess. and don't take more than you need. i know sometimes it's easier to take the whole bag of bagles/box of produce but there is enough for everyone if you leave some for the next homebum.
the more users you can get running Linux the more likely the manufacturers will be interested in your platform. a user will choose the product that works best on her platform; i'm assuming native driver would be better than an NDIS wrapper.
i agree with the other poster that we don't want binary only drivers but if the alternative is windows (binary) or no driver i guess i'll make concessions.
what incentive do manufacturers have for open sourcing their drivers?
first, please don't assign (=) Free education to shitty education. i believe the purpose of discussion is to compare the the two to determine if Free education always means shitty education. instead, the comparison opererator (==) should be used.
second, who said you would be owed a diploma? nobody will be owed a diploma in a free educational system -- you earn the diploma. but everyone will have the right to the opportunity to earn a diploma. in europe the opportunity for higher education (as well as good primary education) is free and a right. they have excellent education based on merit, not money.
in the american education system people who are capable of learning don't have an opportunity because of the cost. grants and scholarships are not keeping up with the cost increases at public schools and telling someone to work a shitty part time job so they can take night classes at a community college isn't much of an opportunity in my eyes. espically if you have to pay for rent, tuition, books, food, etc.
there should be no dumbing down to accomidate people who can't or won't learn. if you can't hack the program you should move to another that suits you. this happens all the time in higher education -- a (good) professor who see a student who isn't up to speed doesn't slow the class down, she suggests the student move to an appropriate level. this doesn't happen in k-12 though i'll get to that later.
...but at least the diploma is worth something
a diploma is worth nothing without the effort put in afterwards. no bank will cash a diploma. when you go to a job interview they look at your work history, diploma and interests to determine what your capabilities are. in the american education system people have to pay to have an opportunity to prove what they are capable of.
i was lucky -- a failure in public education, the oldest of six children (my parents couldn't pay for education), i met the owner of a small business who hired me (at $4.50 an hour) to write software which saved his company thousands every month. using that experience as a base to build on i was able to move into a career as a programmer.
finally, i would argue that the problem with public education is not that it has been dumbed down to accomidate the students -- this is the symptom of a structural problem. education in america doesn't see students as people capable of thinking for themselvs. american education is structured to see students as numbers on a report.
i could go on forever about this but i'll just finish with an example from my edukayshun. i failed "personal keyboarding" in 9th grade, a class taught on typewriters (1992) which was a prerequisite for all computer classes in my high school. i fought the administration however it didn't matter that i already had an aptitude for computers. my fast two fingered typing wasn't acceptable so i was put on a track to take classes that were of little interest to me.
i think education should be free. that said, should the point of education be to make more money? i think getting a job you will enjoy should be the point of education, not the goal of making a sick amount of money. after 7 years of making 60,000 a year i quit and now i only make about 14000, doing freelance work. it's not for everyone but if you like freetime to be creative give up your job, let someone else join the race to the bottom.
taken from a post above:
Pop Quiz: What causes the lack of intelligence in the US, genetics or money?
Remember your environment and most of the experiences throughout your life are directly dependant on money.
your language is owned by the universities who have people on staff to determine what the correct way to convey a message will be.
my language (i call it english) is generated by the masses of people. it changes locally every generation and free to those exposed to the culture that produced it. it doesn't have money or institutions to produce documentation (dictionaries) but that doesn't make it any less legitimate to me.
bush's job is to rubberstamp the decisions that are made by his advisors. he is not evil or stupid. just trying to find more time for naps, tv and snacks like most of his country.
i don't believe that entirely but i know that he doesn't make all the decisions that we think he does.
i kind of like this rock and wish we would take better care of it. what are we going to do when we get to the next rock? we'll obviously need bigger SUV's to cart us around with our carbon dioxide scrubbers. and water conservation will be required.
could you please tell me how we will manage another system any better than we managed this one? space sounds like fun but lets get things running well here before we (or the 'lucky' among us) jump off.
but if you really want to get away, you should get some friends together, design a station and get $cientology to fund it.
you can escape the earth's gravity but you won't escape the problems we experience on this world. well, until you die.
well, being someone who has been homeless (by choice) i say that there is nothing that this system can offer that the internet hasn't provided. most good shelters (and some drop in centers) have internet access and otherwise there is the library. being homeless for me was about freedom. i put a few years of volunteer work into the shelters before becoming a client (now i work with food not bombs).
everyone is there for a different reason. some are crazy, some are handicapped and can't work, some have drug addictions, and some (like myself) don't see the point of working so hard to make money for your boss so he can throw you a few crumbs so you can pay rent and make car payments and eat expensive food and drink in an attempt to make up for the time you lost while working for that life. your paycheck isn't worth the time you loose.
Slashdot Mirror
i don't think restaurants use recycled cooking oil. it iusually ends up as feedfat (animal feed), soap, or industrial lubricant.
up the organic vegetarian cyclists!
solutions exist. they're just not mainstream cool yet.
hey buddy, if that american education of yours had taught you a bit more about the world you might know that the british still measure weight in stones. next time you're in england and someone asks you how much you weigh you better be able to divide by 14.
and you're telling me that you can eyeball 9/16 of an inch but you can't eyeball 0.56 inch? they're very nearly the same thing -- it's just what you are used to. or how adept you are in math (which gets back to your reply to my post where you brough up education and ignorance).
ignorance is just ignorance. bliss is drug induced.
awwww, your pictures made me nostalgic for pittsburgh (my hometown). thanks.
what is this, flamebait? chomp.
americans don't know shit about the rest of the world. the rest of the world knows tons about america. not only do we export movies and tv shows, the rest of the world has informative news programs with correspondents reporting honestly on life in other countries and shedding light on global issues rather than focusing on the bad parts of a city like a teenager fretting over a breakout of zits (bad neighborhoods, like zits, will improve and possibly disapper with time and care but don't try to attack either).
1. WE LIKE BEING DIFFERENT
yeah, so does the rest of the world (except maybe japan). so stop trying to impose your values on them.
2. and 3. together are absurd. you could have at least seperated them a bit.
5. countries all over the world like sports which are not popular here. they like the sports but don't give a fuck who cares.
6. and one cares if you use the british system.
4, 7. "we don't give a shit" now that's a position to exalt with gusto! spoken like a real two year old who just learned to say "no".
grow up...
become a kid.
do i need to mention that america is not the center of the universe? military power, check. influencial, check back in 6 years. the highest standard of living in the world, uh, no.
why do I spend my valuable time with people I'd much rather kick in the eye?
they get away with it.
just like most of the illegal things done in this earthworld. unless you live in a "bad" neighborhood and have dark skin. then you go to jail.
seriously, insightful? if i wanted to do some illegal spaming or whathaveyou i'd just wardrive/warride (on a bike) an affluent residential neighborhood or office park. there are so many coffee shops/telephone booths/university campuses/open AP's around that i really doubt he's going to have any trouble defending himself if anything were to go down.
all the good criminals i know ride bikes (no license plates) and wear respirators (no facial recognition). cars are for drunk drivers, paedophiles, and cops. and people who aren't very fun. or havn't got a bike yet. says me.
start crankin!
my first tech job (1996) was fixing windows computers with problems, most dealing with the soundcard.
i spent HUNDREDS of hours searching for drivers and changing default settings trying to get soundcards (from turtle beach to via to sound blaster compatible...) working in windows 95. as another poster said, it's not because of windows that these worked (or didn't work) it's because the drivers were well designed (or sucked ass).
it's the manufacturers fault for not providing linux drivers. but we have to remedy the situation by picking up their slack.
that said, i've configured around 8 computers with linux. i never checked the HCL first. and i got the sound to work (even on board sound) to work every time. maybe i'm just lucky but it seems that if you know what you are doing you'll get it to work. i didn't say it's easy.
but there's only so much information that YOU can process. so it depens on what you use your computer for. i write php and sql, browse the web and check email. i don't do video work, play games or compile much. for me, the flatline was around 4 years ago. i've been using (and abusing) my pentium 3, 450mhz laptop with 192 mb of ram for four years. recently i had to write some java so i SSH'ed into my shared, co-located server. the compile times were more than cut in half. it's not something i do often so i didn't mind having to work thru SSH. that said, i'll probably be buying a used G4 laptop sometime in the next few months... my laptop's case is cracked in 13 places and the screen has had a slight flicker for over a year.
there are very few stations that play entire albums. those that do often do it illegally. a station is only permitted to play (under the ASCAP or some other acronym's rules) three songs an hour from one artist and no more than two songs from the same album.
there are exceptions; you can make arrangements to play an entire album. but it's rare to hear.
i listen to killradio and kxlu a lot. even then, there are indy musicians who have one or two great songs (which they play and i appreciate) but the rest of the album sucks. just because you made one good song doesn't mean i should buy your album. it's like ordering 'dog shit with lemon ginger sauce' for the sauce. or something.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/0 5/148247
virutal bubblewrap makes everything ok
you gotta recognize that most of us don't care if water was found on mars. right now it doesn't mean much. it's like early explorers finding the mississippi -- great, but it doesn't affect me. over the next few years the knowledge that water exists on mars will become common but i don't think it's necessary to have a play by play of discoveries when they don't affect me...
if you didn't already think of it, try a tazer!
good for electronic parking meeters too.
seriously yo,
there have been so many major breaches of procedure in recent history (guantanamo, 2000 election, tarrifs in violation of trade agreements, withdrawl from weapons treaties...) that i wouldn't be surprised if once again we break the checks and balances rule (as was done in the prescedent setting vietnam war) and reinstate the draft. of course, it would be politically preferable for bush to do it after securing a second term.
finally, you put war in quotes; what makes you think vietnam wasn't a war?
Remember the Viking sailing ships?
Remember Columbus' sailing ships?
Remember the Conestoga wagons?
Remember the first steps off this planet? and onto another world?
for me, it comes down to money. i already give the feds a wad of cash which they blow on things like wars to fight off empty, and missions to outerspace so the rich fucks can get away from poor folks.
i don't want to explore space. it's all rocks and desert and BYOO2. i like the earth though i have to fight to keep a few mother fuckers from from pissin it away.
i'm not content with reading about exploration in a book or seeing pictures on tv; i want to explore the earth. i fund my explorations myself (i'm freezing my ass off in CT right now). if you want to explore space, ok. but find a way to do it without taking money from those who don't give a fuck about distant red rocks and unbreathable atmospheres.
btw, my grandfather was project manager for several of the surveyor missions. he got paid too much and worked too hard.
that's my beef with the space program -- if you want my money ya better do something useful with it. i didn't give it to you so you could realize your dream. my dream is to travel the world and meet cool people and get it on with all the hot ladies(*). but the government won't give me more than food stamps(**) which don't even buy alchohol.
(*) if the space program could find space alien women like the ones on star trek i might reconsider. but i expect aliens women to look more like sea horses and behave like praying mantises.
(**) ladies, i'm not really on food stamps anymore. not that there's anything wrong with that.
most reciepts don't have the full credit card number anymore.
dumpster diving is done for many resons but by definition it involves a dumpster (and no money). this article is about thrifty spending.
i dumpster (dive) most nights for food. the best places are bagle shops/bakerys and health food stores. supermarkets have too much nasty stuff like meat and crab legs (i swore off supermarket dumpsters after blindly sticking my hand into a bag full of crab legs). at the end of the school year i dumpster university campuses for the desktops, laptops, stereos, and tv's which always work. i fix up the computers, load linux and give them community centers. then sell the tv's and stereos cheap through ads (often to freshmen at universities).
my first real dumpster dive (not including my suburban curbside-trash-picking) was at an office building that had caught fire. they gutted the building and threw all the equipment into huge dumpsters. everything smelled like smoke (which no amount of bleach or cleaner could remove) but i got slide projectors, pelican-style cases, monitors (no desktops?), reams of paper, business software and some other junk.
if you get the urge to dumpster for food PLEASE do the rest of us a favor and keep the area clean. two of my regular dumpsters got locked in the past month because people would pull everything out and make a mess. and don't take more than you need. i know sometimes it's easier to take the whole bag of bagles/box of produce but there is enough for everyone if you leave some for the next homebum.
the more users you can get running Linux the more likely the manufacturers will be interested in your platform. a user will choose the product that works best on her platform; i'm assuming native driver would be better than an NDIS wrapper.
i agree with the other poster that we don't want binary only drivers but if the alternative is windows (binary) or no driver i guess i'll make concessions.
what incentive do manufacturers have for open sourcing their drivers?
Free education = shitty education
...but at least the diploma is worth something
first, please don't assign (=) Free education to shitty education. i believe the purpose of discussion is to compare the the two to determine if Free education always means shitty education. instead, the comparison opererator (==) should be used.
second, who said you would be owed a diploma? nobody will be owed a diploma in a free educational system -- you earn the diploma. but everyone will have the right to the opportunity to earn a diploma. in europe the opportunity for higher education (as well as good primary education) is free and a right. they have excellent education based on merit, not money.
in the american education system people who are capable of learning don't have an opportunity because of the cost. grants and scholarships are not keeping up with the cost increases at public schools and telling someone to work a shitty part time job so they can take night classes at a community college isn't much of an opportunity in my eyes. espically if you have to pay for rent, tuition, books, food, etc.
there should be no dumbing down to accomidate people who can't or won't learn. if you can't hack the program you should move to another that suits you. this happens all the time in higher education -- a (good) professor who see a student who isn't up to speed doesn't slow the class down, she suggests the student move to an appropriate level. this doesn't happen in k-12 though i'll get to that later.
a diploma is worth nothing without the effort put in afterwards. no bank will cash a diploma. when you go to a job interview they look at your work history, diploma and interests to determine what your capabilities are. in the american education system people have to pay to have an opportunity to prove what they are capable of.
i was lucky -- a failure in public education, the oldest of six children (my parents couldn't pay for education), i met the owner of a small business who hired me (at $4.50 an hour) to write software which saved his company thousands every month. using that experience as a base to build on i was able to move into a career as a programmer.
finally, i would argue that the problem with public education is not that it has been dumbed down to accomidate the students -- this is the symptom of a structural problem. education in america doesn't see students as people capable of thinking for themselvs. american education is structured to see students as numbers on a report.
i could go on forever about this but i'll just finish with an example from my edukayshun. i failed "personal keyboarding" in 9th grade, a class taught on typewriters (1992) which was a prerequisite for all computer classes in my high school. i fought the administration however it didn't matter that i already had an aptitude for computers. my fast two fingered typing wasn't acceptable so i was put on a track to take classes that were of little interest to me.
i think education should be free. that said, should the point of education be to make more money? i think getting a job you will enjoy should be the point of education, not the goal of making a sick amount of money. after 7 years of making 60,000 a year i quit and now i only make about 14000, doing freelance work. it's not for everyone but if you like freetime to be creative give up your job, let someone else join the race to the bottom.
p.s. i'm mostly houseless. it's fucking great.
taken from a post above: Pop Quiz: What causes the lack of intelligence in the US, genetics or money?
Remember your environment and most of the experiences throughout your life are directly dependant on money.
your language is owned by the universities who have people on staff to determine what the correct way to convey a message will be.
my language (i call it english) is generated by the masses of people. it changes locally every generation and free to those exposed to the culture that produced it. it doesn't have money or institutions to produce documentation (dictionaries) but that doesn't make it any less legitimate to me.
bush's job is to rubberstamp the decisions that are made by his advisors. he is not evil or stupid. just trying to find more time for naps, tv and snacks like most of his country.
i don't believe that entirely but i know that he doesn't make all the decisions that we think he does.
i kind of like this rock and wish we would take better care of it. what are we going to do when we get to the next rock? we'll obviously need bigger SUV's to cart us around with our carbon dioxide scrubbers. and water conservation will be required.
could you please tell me how we will manage another system any better than we managed this one? space sounds like fun but lets get things running well here before we (or the 'lucky' among us) jump off.
but if you really want to get away, you should get some friends together, design a station and get $cientology to fund it.
you can escape the earth's gravity but you won't escape the problems we experience on this world. well, until you die.
well, being someone who has been homeless (by choice) i say that there is nothing that this system can offer that the internet hasn't provided. most good shelters (and some drop in centers) have internet access and otherwise there is the library. being homeless for me was about freedom. i put a few years of volunteer work into the shelters before becoming a client (now i work with food not bombs).
everyone is there for a different reason. some are crazy, some are handicapped and can't work, some have drug addictions, and some (like myself) don't see the point of working so hard to make money for your boss so he can throw you a few crumbs so you can pay rent and make car payments and eat expensive food and drink in an attempt to make up for the time you lost while working for that life. your paycheck isn't worth the time you loose.
i hate these kids!?